The U.S. came in at 27th overall for air quality and climate protection. Switzerland continues to lead the world, followed by France and Denmark. India and Bangladesh were among the lowest-scoring nations, according to the report, which is updated every 2 years by researchers from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Columbia University in New York City.

The updated report, which coincides with the World Economic Forum now underway in Davos, Switzerland, ranks 180 countries on 24 performance indicators linked to environmental health and ecosystem vitality.

Economically advantaged countries in western Europe have consistently ranked highest in environmental health in the 2-decade history of the report, and that is no accident, says EPI principal investigator Zach Wendling, PhD, of Yale.

"It takes material prosperity to invest in the things that will make a difference. But it also takes good governance -- governments that are responsive and respond to the challenges," he said.

The U.S. ranked near the bottom of the list with regard to other wealthy democracies, and Wendling said this is largely due to the U.S.'s failure to respond to the challenge of limiting greenhouse gases.

He added that the newest ranking does not reflect environmental policy changes announced by the Trump administration, but mostly not yet acted on.

Last summer, the administration announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, and the Environmental Protection Agency has also announced plans to roll back dozens of Obama-era regulations aimed at protecting the environment.

"Pulling out of the Paris climate agreement reflects a lack of commitment to achieving emissions goals," Wendling said. "And the scaling back on national monuments will remove important ecosystems from protection."

Another key finding of the report: there has been significant global progress in protecting marine biomes.

In 2010, the Convention on Biological Diversity announced a goal of increasing protected ocean and coastal areas to 10% of the globe's marine areas by 2020. The world's protected oceans and coastal waters increased nearly 20-fold between 1993 and 2017, and they have more than doubled since 2010.

"This is largely due to countries in Europe, North America, and certain Pacific Island states really stepping up to the plate and getting us to that goal," Wendling said. "We can congratulate ourselves, but we also need to make sure that these protected areas are distributed across the world."

He added that the recently announced Trump administration plan to open nearly all U.S. coastal waters to offshore drilling conflicts with the goal of further protecting the oceans.

"It is incompatible to have a protected area and drill for oil in the middle of it," he said.

Most countries have also improved on greenhouse gas emission intensity during the past decade, with three-fifths of countries in the EPI reporting declining carbon dioxide (CO2) intensities. Around nine out of 10 countries have seen declining intensities for methane, nitrous oxide, and black carbon during the period.

While these trends are cause for optimism, the report also noted that improvements must be accelerated to meet the target goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.

The rapidly industrializing nations of China and India ranked 120th and 177th, respectively, among countries included in the ranking.

India's standing at the bottom of the list reflects the need for national efforts to improve rapidly deteriorating air quality, protect biodiversity, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Wendling said.

"China may be moving in the right direction, but what we are not seeing in our data and anecdotally is action in India," he noted, adding that air quality issues are increasingly in the news in India, which may spur much needed political action to address environmental health issues.

The EPI is a joint project of the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University's Earth Institute, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum.

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